FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a scheduler for sports tournaments organized in the elimination mode in accordance with the preamble of claim 1.
Tournaments organized in the elimination mode such as e.g. football, rugby, tennis tournaments etc. have in recent years enjoyed an increasing degree of attention in the media, with the result that these events are utilized by enterprises for placing advertisement. In recent years the trend has been even for enterprises in unrelated lines of business, i.e. those distributing products not immediately related to the respective kinds of sports, to exploit the impact of such tournaments in the media for their advertisement. Besides comparatively extensive advertisement activities such as e.g. stadium advertisement, TV commercials advertisement on contestants, garment, and selective catering to prominent entrants in VIP lounges, it is also being attempted to make use of information material related to the sports event per se as an advertisement carrier.
Particularly in major sports events as, say, a soccer world championship, comparatively complicated event plans are distributed by the organizers. A like event plan, which shall even now be referred to, is represented in FIG. 1. In these commonly distributed event plans the participants in a preliminary round are grouped, for example, in eight groups A to H. In the preliminary round the teams of one group compete against each other, with the teams finishing first and second in each group qualifying for the round of the last sixteen. In the round of the last sixteen, these first and second ranked entrants compete against each other in accordance with the system illustrated in FIG. 1, with the winners of the round of sixteen matches qualifying for the quarterfinal round which, in turn, is conducted in accordance with a predetermined pattern.
Following the quarterfinal round, two semifinal matches take place; the winning teams of the semifinals compete for the tournament victory in the final round, whereas the losing teams of the semifinals compete for rank three.
It constitutes a problem in the event plan represented in FIG. 1 that results, winners and losers of single rounds must be transferred by hand to the event program for the next round, and that as a general rule the space available for listing all the results and the present status of the tournament such as to be perceivable at one glance is very limited.
Although in the case of electronic, microprocessor supported tournament schedulers it would be possible to represent all the results in a simple manner, such schedulers are generally too expensive to be used as advertisement carriers in the corresponding quantities.
It is another drawback of the known event plans that they generally provide little space for advertising surface and are therefore merely used as information carriers but not as advertisement carriers.
For the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that the generic event plans are, as a matter of course, not only provided for team tournaments but also for tournaments of individual persons such as e.g. tennis tournaments.
The invention is based on the objective of furnishing a scheduler for sports tournaments organized in the elimination mode, which enables simple survey of the tournament status and is useful as an advertisement carrier.
This object is achieved by a scheduler having the features of claim 1.
By subdividing a scheduling area of the scheduler into several fields, with each field being reserved for one of the above described rounds (preliminary round, round of the last sixteen, quarterfinal round etc.), and providing a number of receptions, which number corresponds to the number of entrants in a respective round, and fastening a marker corresponding to one team or entrant in each reception, the spectator is capable of grasping the present tournament status in a simple manner. The markers assigned to each of the entrants are, in accordance with the match results of the single rounds transferred to a respective subsequent round, thereby doing away with the necessity of hand-written entries or filling in lists in order to keep track. As the information about the entrant or team proper is arranged on the marker, sufficient space for advertisement is preserved on the surface or back surface of the scheduler. Owing to the comparatively high quality getup of the scheduler with receptions, insertable markers etc., the target person is induced to carefully keep the scheduler, such that the applied advertisement will most likely be perceived by the addressee. A like scheduler, which can be produced in a comparatively simple manner while having a high degree of information value, is particularly well suited as a handout e.g. in the food industry.
The structure of the scheduler may be designed to be particularly compact by concentric arrangement of the fields assigned to the various rounds, with the final field having a central position, and the fields for the preceding rounds encompassing the final field. A particularly advantageous option is a circular disk shape of the scheduler surface including circular or annular fields. Needless to say, different geometries of the fields are equally applicable.
A scheduler which can be produced in a particularly simple manner is obtained by designing the marker receptions as snap-in recesses for insertion of the pin-type markers.
Manipulation of the scheduler is simplified by connecting associated fields through slide paths along which the markers may be moved to the next field.
Instead of slide paths, it is also possible to arrange adjacent fields such as to be displaceable relative to each other. In the case of annular fields, it is suitable to design every other circle area or annular area such as to be rotatable and arranged adjacent to a stationary circle area or annular area.
In order to simplify transfer of the markers to the next field, the scheduler surface may be provided with a marking--preferably color coding--determining a marker's path to the closest neighboring field.
The scheduler according to the invention may be used with particular efficiency for team tournaments such as e.g. a soccer world championship where the number of participating teams is sixteen for the first round or round of the last sixteen, eight for the quarterfinal round, and four for the semifinal round.
The group matches of a preceding preliminary round may be arranged on another disk-shaped preliminary round disk, with one radial segment subdivided into radially consecutive segment fields being assigned to each preliminary round entrant. Each segment field corresponds to one point awarded in this preliminary round, such that the results for the single entrants are recognizable by marking the segment fields from radially outside to radially inside.
In the center area of the preliminary round disk, in turn, a marking is advantageously arranged which is executed by logical combination with the next round arranged on a main round disk.
The match results may be entered e.g. on two results disks, whereby the target person can read the tournament status from the main round disk and from the individual results on the results disk.
All of the above described disks (main round disk, preliminary round disk, results disk(s)) are advantageously interconnected by suitable means such as e.g. a rotary joint, whereby the tournament scheduler is combined into a compact form.
The single scheduler disks may carry advertisement prints on their back surfaces and on the scheduler surface.
The disks are advantageously manufactured of carton or carton surrogate materials such as e.g. synthetic material.
Preferably used markers are pin-type inserts comprising a planar head which serves as an information carrier.
Further advantageous embodiments of the invention represent the subject matters of the remaining subclaims.
Here below preferred embodiments of the invention are described in detail by reference to schematic drawings, wherein.